The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-10-12
THE OYsTGR BILL.
Some Views of DR. A. Oemler With Re-
gard to 1t.

&bI0 W ~.
WILMINGTON ISLAND, Oct. during q
Visit to the city last Friday ascertained
fol. the first time the character of the oyster
bill now before the Legislature. It IS known
that | drafted the terrapin bin, also that
with Others have contemplated an oyster
law for several years and, as l have been
asked whether this was my bill, feel COM
PEELED to address you an emphatic public
denial.
Being an island property owner and,
therefore, party apparently TO be bene-
flied by the present bill, and my sons be-
ing in the oyster shipping business for sew
eral years, my position seems peculiarly
favorable for just and impartial criticism.
AS citizen l disapprove of it, because sec
tion with its color of titlen foreshadows
a possibility, if not intent, of fraudulent ac-
quisition OF public property; as one inter
ested in the oyster trade | condemn it in
view of its probable unlimited curtailment
of the public DOMAIN; as an island property
owner | would favor it, but only, if it APP
plied to marshes now truly and honestly be-
LONGING to each sea island plantation, and
such are generally OF very limited extent.
II correctly understood "color of title"
means for instance, if A wishes
to grab any number of acres of the
public marshes he gets B., who has no claim
whatever to the property, to give him a
title, and after one year it is his, unless
some other party can produce better one
Should such bill pass all the most valua-
BILE oyster grounds would be promptly
placed under color of title in order to
make the title bear as old a date under the
law as possible. But, Mr.. Editor, permit
ME to embrace this opportunity of bringing
the necessity of the passage of just and
practical protective oyster law before those
of the public most interested in the subject.
| have been located here, at my grand
fathers homestead, for the past twenty-one
years, nearer to, perhaps, the most
valuable oyster grounds south of the
Potomac, and am in position
to know, and all oystermen will bear
me out, that oysters have very greatly
diminished in quantity. Nor could it have
been otherwise under the improvident and
wasteful practices of oystermeD. The banks
too of Raccoon oysters, which formerly
furnished stock for opening, have nearly
all disappeared except near private landings
and now recourse is had to the smaller
tonged oysters for that purpose. Large
quantities of shell and opened oysters are an
nualIy shipped north and without protection
the banks may soon be exhausted. When
some years ago l first made the expert
ment of shipping oysters to New York the
Ocean Steamship Company considered it
case of shipping Goals to Newcastle Last
winter to procure the supply for a ship
ment of 272 gallons opened oysters and fifty
barrels in the shell my sons had to send into
Beaufort county, South Carolina, under a
license of $25, and this inclusive of the out
put of our own planted grounds ard what
ten oystermen could gather in one week
from the public banks within the county.
A practical oyster law should embrace
the following features:
/. 1t should be unlawful to take or catch
oysters from the public beds for any pur-
pose between May and Sept. 1.
q Oysters should be culled on the beds
from which they had been taken. laws of
Maryland.
8. There should be license of from 50 for
small boats to S. for sloops under custom
house tonnage. Iaw of Maryland)
f. The use of dredges should be prohib-
tied.
5. Any citizen should be privileged to
bed or plant oysters under certain condi-
tionS.
6. Planted or bedded oysters should be
protected by law.
z. The owners of land on the coast should
be entitled to plant oysters to the distance
of 100 feet below low water mark opposite
the marsh lands strictly belonging to the
plantations, as well as opposite the terra
firma, on taxable land. The limit of such
marshes may be defined)
Oysters cannot survive on sandy or soft
muddy bottom. On the coast of Georgia
areas of bottom of proper character are very
limited in extent, frequently consisting of
only a few square feet, surrounded by a
wide territory of soft mud. According to
the present law, one may plant oysters in
any one river or creek l20 feet below low
water mark a distance of 500 yards, but
there exists probably nowhere in the State
of Georgia a continuous area of &c, 900
square yards Ia trihe over four acres of
proper bottom, nor could safe one be made
artificially without great expense, and then
only under most favorable circumstances.
The Maryland law says: THAT the owner
or owners of any land bordering on any of
the navigable waters of this State, the lines
of which extend into and are covered by
said waters, shall have the exclusive priv
lege of using the same for protecting, rails
ing, bedding. or depositing oysters within
the lines of their own lands; and any owner
or owners of land lying and bordering upon
any of the waters of this State, shall have
power to locate and appropriate, in any of
the waters adjoining his, her or their lands,
one lot of five acres for the purpose of pro-
tocting bedding, etc"
The present law gives the owner of island
properly only the right to plant oysters OPP
posite the taxable land, but frequently the
wash OF the sand OF the taxable property
renders the bottom totally unfit. Thus
Charles Barstow, the most extensive land
owner on this island q $50 acres has on a
taxable frontage of two miles on Warsaw
river not a square foot of bottom upon
which an oyster could be planted, while only
opposite the small body of marsh between
his land and Turner's Rocks the bottom is
adapted to oysters. Were | not satisfied
OF the fact that the withdrawal
of these small bodies of marsh
from the public privilege would rather
benefit the oyster trade eventually, and
would not materially curtail the public do
main. ] should withhold my advocacy of
section from self interest, because we pro-
cure many more oysters from the natural
beds than we could expect from our planted
grounds. Furthermore, every oyster pro-
tected or planted becomes of benefit to the
oystermen, because when it spawns there
are thousands of chances to one it will all
float away with the tide to deposit itself as
spat somewhere on public ground.
In consequence of the poor yield more
dead shells than oysters are brought up in
the longs and in order to avail themselves
of as much of the tide as possible the Gull
ing out of the dead shells is deferred until
the boat is filed. Frequently small boats
are repeatedly emptied into larger ones
and the culling is then performed
in the flood tide, when all